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Does your program seem like it’s trying to do too much at once? Are you using a lot of delay() or while() loops that are holding other things up? If so, your project is a good candidate to use timers. In this tutorial, we’ll discuss AVR and Arduino timers and how to use them to write better code.

At long last, the Arduino team has released Arduino 1.0 – an update to the development environment and core libraries that make the Arduino hardware do its thang. The 1.0 update has been in the works for a while, and covers a lot of changes, including some you’ll notice and some you won’t. How does all this affect your Arduino projects? Read on to find out.

Whether tackling a new hobby, prototyping a product idea, or simply satisfying your curiosity, the world of Arduino offers a wealth of possibities. The best way to dive in is with the right resources in hand, so EngBlaze has picked five of the best Arduino books out there to help you brush up on your skills. Each book caters to different topics and skill levels, so check out our summaries to see which one is right for you.

This article explains, step-by-step, how to set up the AVR Studio 5 IDE for use with Arduino projects. It also includes some background on the pros and cons of working with AVR Studio, notes on general setup for working with Atmel devices, and a few other tips we’ve picked up along the way. Feel free to skip around to the sections that interest you.

At Engblaze, we’re somewhat obsessed with squeezing every possible bit of performance out of our circuits. Ok, really obsessed. Like beyond Facebook-stalking and into restraining-order-territory obsessed. To that end, we consider it our duty to bring news of other intrepid performance squeezing pioneers in the DIY electronics world.

Ever wonder how the Arduino platform got started? IEEE has a very well written article on the history of Arduino and the global five person team behind its creation. Although Arduino isn’t the most powerful or even the most flexible development board ever to come along, the story of its adoption by the open-source and creative community is a great example of how virtual collaboration can be an incredibly powerful tool.

If you’re a true geek, mark your Italian travel guide with the address for the Bar di Re Arduino in Ivrea, the namesake hangout of Arduino creator Massimo Banzi. Next time you’re there, you can toast the DIY hacking community in his honor. The bartenders may not know what you’re talking about, but your nerdy, nerdy soul will.

Frustrated at not knowing why your Arduino code is doing something funky? Or perhaps you’re a battle-hardened veteran of the “sprinkle Serial.println() every other line” school of coding. We at EngBlaze have had our own bad days with tracking down obscure code problems, and Steve is here to help.

Straight outta Compton the official Arduino labs, the GPRS/GSM shield and associated library have been developed for your communications pleasure. There is a lot of scattered work out there on cellular communications, but this project was developed by a three-person team that includes two Arduino co-founders, so you know you’re getting a level of professionalism. Like some of our other cellular posts, the library relies on standard AT commands, so you may be able to adapt it to a range of other hardware. Check out their detailed documentation and see if it will work for your project.

Ah yes… the wonderful and oft-misunderstood world of microcontroller interrupts. Are you looking to build a project that relies on very precise timing or needs to react quickly to an input? Then don’t change that channel, my friend. In this tutorial we’ll cover what interrupts are, what they do, and how to use them.

This is the cheapest we’ve seen for a plug-and-play cellular solution, so it’s definitely a good resource. His site walks you through the setup process and provides example code plus a complete library, so if you’re looking to do something similar, check it out.